A Matter of Attire
by LittleCrab
Summary: B'Elanna gives fashion advice to the last person she'd ever expect to ask her. J/7 implied/to come.
1. A Matter of Attire

**Title: A Matter of Attire**

Genre: General/Humor/Romance  
Pairing: Janeway/Seven implied  
Characters: B'Elanna/Seven  
Rating: T (due to some salty language)

 **Summary:** B'Elanna gives fashion advice to the last person she'd ever expect to ask her.

 **Author's notes:** Hello and welcome to my very first fanfiction! Please be kind as I also have no beta. Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoy it!

 **Disclaimer:** Just the usual quick disclaimer that I don't own any of the creations of the Star Trek franchise or Paramount, and am only borrowing them for the moment for personal entertainment and writing practice. I'll return them unharmed after this flight of fancy.

"Lieutenant. I require your assistance."

The dull click of heels against the carpeted deck stopped abruptly around the area of the Chief Engineer's knees, which were sticking out from under a workstation. She was stuck making routine, and highly frustrating repairs for the second time this week.

"Can't it wait, Seven? I'm kind of busy."

"The matter is urgent."

"Ship's safety urgent?"

"No."

Laying on her back, B'Elanna Torres grumbled under her breath and jammed the hyperspanner a little left of where she had meant it to go. The workstation above her protested by showering her with sparks. "Aww fuck!" she slammed her hand against the metal casing.

Rubbing her sore knuckles, the engineer tried to preemptively cut off an undoubtedly awkward conversation with the former drone. "Well, Seven, I'm stuck fixing this thing, so we'll have to chat another time."

"You do not have to move to assist me. I will speak to you while you are working."

Unseen, B'Elanna rolled her eyes. "How efficient."

"Indeed."

There was a very un-Borg-like pause. The engineer continued working, waited for Seven to continue. The suspense was starting to get to the half-klingon.

"...so...what's this urgent issue?" B'Elanna lead.

"I have a romantic engagement."

B'Elanna sat up in shock only to bang her head on the underside of the workstation.

"Lieutenant! Are you damaged?"

"Kahless.." the engineer hissed through her teeth. "...I'm fine." She rubbed her ridges but remained on her back. "You're asking me for dating advice?"

"You have achieved successful coupling."

"What?! I - I suppose that's true." she began to relax and started tinkering with the workstation once more. "So what's up?"

"I am confused by the matter of attire."

"You came to me for fashion advice? I thought that was the doctor's turf?"

"Clarify the reference t-"

"Area of expertise," interrupted the Engineer. Another unusual pause followed. B'Elanna may have even detected an awkward shifting of heel-clad feet, which was all she could really see of the drone.

"The doctor's choices are insufficient."

"It's okay. The whole pastel skirt deal isn't really my thing either."

Girding her loins, B'Elanna recalibrated the spanner and tried again. No sparks. Progress had been made.

"Lieutenant?"

The brunette grunted a response.

"Why do individuals complicate interaction by designating specific garments to social contexts?"

"That's a bigger discussion than I'm willing to go into today, but think of it this way. The goal of a romantic engagement," B'Elanna barely refrained from using sarcastic air quotes; they would confuse Seven and derail the conversation into endless explanations of colloquialisms, "especially an initial one, is to impress the other person."

"I thought the goal of romantic engagements was to remove garments."

Torres snickered. "Well, impressing the other person tends to facilitate getting some ass."

"Explain."

The ardentness of that demand was almost cute, and B'Elanna smiled a tiny smile to herself. Seven of Nine the fourteen year old boy. Who knew. The engineer began her final scans of the repaired equipment. Hopefully if she'd done this right she wouldn't be back here next week after Chapman messed up her systems again.

Speaking of Chapman…"When you go on a date you are testing the waters - seeing if you are interested in the other person, sexually or emotionally. They are doing the same thing with you. If you like them, you want to show off the best sides of yourself. Clothing can be one way of setting the scene. It should make you feel good. Confident. Confidence is what is ultimately sexy."

"I...I wish to wear pants."

"Totally acceptable."

"But the doctor -"

"The doctor can shove it."

"Where?"

B'Elanna slid out from under the workstation just enough to look Seven in the face. She detected a definite twinkle in the ice blue eyes, before bursting out in laughter. Pulling herself out from under the workstation, she hit a few keys and was rewarded with all the right beeps. "That's right baby, you're doing so good," B'Elanna cooed at the workstation.

Behind her, Seven flushed briefly before her nanoprobes removed the heat from her cheeks. The Lieutenant was not an unattractive individual. Biological processes were very confusing.

"Here we go," B'Elanna brought up several images on the screen, "the wardrobes of 2,000 star systems to choose from. I think these are probably what you're looking for." She narrowed the search terms.

Seven scrolled through the selections.

"Nice. Ya, that one will look good. Maybe with this vest? Totally. And the flats. You need the flats for sure."

"Captain to Seven of Nine."

Seven shot up to stand at attention even more rigidly than usual. B'Elanna would have sworn the drone was going to sprain something, a la Harry Kim, if she wasn't already practically perfect in every way. The eagerness to please was rolling off in waves.

"Captain. Seven here."

"I'm just touching base to see if we're still on for a philosophical discussion at oh-nineteen-hundred?"

"Affirmative."

"Good! See you then!"

"I am looking forward to it as well."

"Me too."

"with great anticipation."

"It should be fun."

"I am looking forward to it."

"Seven?"

"Yes, Captain?"

"I'm going to go now."

"Yes, Captain."

Seven closed the commlink. The statuesque drone looked abuzz with panic and excitement, which for her amounted to a subtle widening of the eyes and tensing of her shoulders. She walked over to the standing engineer and at a full arms'-length away clasped B'Elanna by the biceps, looking into her eyes very seriously.

"Thank you for your assistance, Lieutenant. I must leave."

And with that, six feet of Borg ingenuity walked out the door, a slight lilt to her commanding stride. The doors whooshed shut behind her.

B'Elanna stood there in the middle of the room. Well that had been one of the weirder eight minutes of her life. "Was that some Borg version of a hug?"

The empty room did not weigh in.

"You would not believe the day I had." The doors to their quarters hissed shut behind her and B'Elanna could feel her shoulders begin to relax.

"Vorik grinding your gears again?"

"Not so much today, thank the gods." B'Elanna unzipped her tunic and shrugged out of it, tossing it haphazardly on the couch. Tom came up behind her and began to rub her shoulders.

"mmmm...ow"

"Sorry, babe. too hard?"

"ung...no, keep going.."

"that's what she said."

"Pig."

"Light of My Life."

The comfortable pause of the married stretched between them as Tom continued his ministrations.

"...aren't you going to ask me my gossip?"

"It's killing me. Spill."

"A certain Ex-Borg came to ask my advice."

"On what? How to kill a targ with the pure force of logic? Oww!"

That would be a new bruise for the Doctor to ask awkward questions about.

"No! She wanted my fashion advice." The massage abruptly stopped, and she could feel the tell-tale-tremor in his hands. "Thomas Eugene Paris, don't you dare laugh at me. I won't tell you the best part."

"It gets better?" Tom burst out in barely contained glee.

"Not telling."

"Aww, 'Lana! Please!"

"Nope."

"You can't leave me hanging!"

"Well...shoulders. Stat."

"Yes, Ma'am!" Tom quickly got to work.

"She was getting ready for a date."

"WITH WHO?!"

"I didn't ask."

"WHY NOT?!"

"Tom! Tom! Stop jumping on the couch! I just thought we should let the old girl have some fun for a while."

"Seven having fun? I can't wait."

B'Elanna coughed, "...yeah, Seven."

"I need to talk to Harry. We need to set up a betting pool right away."

"Oh come on, we'll find out who the mystery person is soon enough, when it all inevitably explodes…"


	2. Strange Matter

AUTHOR'S NOTES: A prequel to "A Matter of Attire." That story was supposed to be a standalone, but then I couldn't put it down. Turns out I love writing Seven and B'Elanna as frenemies.

Captain Janeway woke with a start and a yelp, nearly tumbling out of the shuttle bunk with fright at the dark silhouette looming inches away.

As her eyes adjusted, she realized she was in no danger, and raised her hand to her chest to calm her beating heart in a combination of relief, embarrassment and exasperation.

"Damnit, Seven."

"We have almost arrived at our coordinates. We may begin our observations of the event horizon."  
The former Borg straightened and turned abruptly, efficiently moving towards the cockpit of the shuttlecraft.

Janeway swung her legs over the side of the bunk, and reached up to pinch her nose. The silence was punctuated by the beeps of commands being entered into the forward console, and the Captain knew that, despite the impenetrability that others would perceive, she had hurt her young companion. With a sigh she got up from the bunk and made her way to the bow.

Sitting down she looked out across the void. They were perched in orbit around a sun locked in turn in the gravitational sphere of an invisible neighbour. It was the death dance of what had once been a binary star system, until the larger partner collapsed under it's own massive gravity. The sun's rotation around the black hole was stable (at least for the next billion years) and would provide them with a unique opportunity to study the warping of spacetime from a safe distance. The captain sat for a moment and marvelled.

"You are afraid of me," came a flat voice to her right. While seemingly toneless, Janeway could hear the layer of anger and under that, the fear, which hovered just outside of Seven's statement. "I am Borg."

Janeway turned sharply, "No, of course not," she said, seeking Seven's eyes with her own. "You just startled me." When the woman did not turn her gaze from the viewscreen ahead, the Captain habitually reached out in comfort, but instead of going for the shoulder as she would with any other crewman, she placed her hand atop Seven's left, running her thumb across the spiderweb of implants. She had hoped to show her comfort with Seven's remaining Borgness, but the scientist had frozen, staring down at their joined hands on the console.

"Is this alright," Janeway asked, suddenly and unusually feeling unsure.

For Seven, the universe had suddenly contracted to the space of her hand, time slowing down to a fraction of its former rate. The sensation of the Captain's soft thumb running over her implants was magnified by the data they received. She could tell the Captain's heart rate, her median temperature. Seven's own heart rate had spiked unusually and her thinking had slowed. She had the strangest feeling in her abdomen and chest - a not quite tingling, a not quite ache. Was it a lightness or a heaviness? She had insufficient data.

Seven registered concern on the captain's face and recollected a question had been asked in the millisecond of warped time that had preceded. "It...is acceptable."

The Captain's face brightened, causing another strange sensation to run through the former drone. "Good," said Janeway, releasing Seven's hand and eagerly looking out into the blackness. "Let's do some science."

Seven's hand felt cold and empty, despite the fact that it was running within normal parameters. Matter was already acting strangely.

*****

"And then Lieutenant Chapman drops the hyperspanner down into some crack between the console and the bulkhead that only an idiot like him could find, where - get this - it overloads and fuses in place. I'm going to have to fix the goddamn thing myself. I'm the Chief Engineer, Harry, I'm not supposed to be doing routine maintenance!"

The half-Klingon looked down at her lunch tray in frustration, scooping up a spoonful of slop to inspect it, "Oh gross, Neelix has outdone himself this week."

"It looks awful, but tastes not too bad," the Ensign said through a viscous green mouthful, "Can't you get Vorik to help?"

"Maybe I should... Tom is convinced - for some weird reason - that Vorik still has a thing for me, and maybe some good old fashioned jealousy's just what I need to get revenge on my darling husband after last week's pie thing."

"I can't believe he got you with that pie thing!" Harry grinned at his friend.

"He got _us_ with that pie thing, and I don't want to talk about it, and you can stop giggling at me or you'll be on my shit list next!" B'Elanna jabbed her spoon into her nutritional goo, and had a forkful halfway to her mouth when she was interrupted by a figure abruptly looming over their table.

"You are discussing inter-species mating phenomena - explain."

"Good morning Seven," B'Elanna executed an eye-roll of epic proportions before leaning back in her seat to gaze up confrontationally, "if you're going to ask awkward questions, could you please stop looming over us - you're scaring Harry."

"B'Elanna -" squawked the Ensign in protest. B'Elanna forged ahead, undeterred, "Or better yet, just don't say anything and leave us alone."

"B'Elanna!"

Undaunted, the former drone slipped into the seat next to the Chief Engineer. B'Elanna crossed her arms and gave Seven the side-eye before her curiosity got the best of her. "Sooo...I thought you had stopped observing Tom and I like lab rats. I can tell you now that we are uninterested in participating in your weird little experiments."

"I have insufficient data. I... I realize my former methods were invasive."

"Oh my, is that an apology I hear coming from Seven-has-no-boundaries-Nine?"

"Affirmative. I do not wish to cause you further distress."

B'Elanna was uncharacteristically without words. She had expected their usual mounting aggression, and without a counter-attack from the former drone, she didn't know what to do with the rude words sitting on the tip of her tongue. She stared at Seven like nanoprobes were spewing from the former drone's ocular implant. She knew she was supposed to be the grown-up (and that the Captain would tear her a new one, for starting an unprovoked fight) so she bit back her next zinger until she could see if Seven was in earnest. "Okaaay..." she started suspiciously, "what do you want to know?"

If it were possible for Seven of Nine to look uncertain, B'Elanna would swear the look that passed over the scientist's face would have been a close approximation.

"How can one determine if one is experiencing sexual desire?"

Ensign Kim's eyes glazed over in a unique combination of hope and panic. B'Elanna kicked him under the table.

"B'Ela-"

"- what Harry means to say, is that usually it's fairly straightforward - happiness and potentially nervousness being around the person, you know - dilating pupils, largely the wish to copulate - I'm surprised this isn't in your all-knowing Borg databases."

Harry blushed, and blushed, and blushed and looked at his food while grumbled something that sounded a lot like "Why do I ever tell you anything," to the goop.

"I have the combined knowledge of over 6000 species, however the Borg discarded any sensory memory deemed irrelevant." She paused, "Your courtship with Lieutenant Paris began confrontationally. Did you experience anger before desire? Are these not mutually exclusive emotions?"

B'Elanna wished that the deck would open up beneath her, or that they would be attacked by pirates, or that a warp core breach would save her from this conversation. She would rather fight the Kazon all over again, than talk about her feelings...in general, and oh so especially with Seven of Nine. None of these things happened, however, B'Elanna was saved by fate nonetheless.

Seven was about to press the Chief Engineer further when her olfactory implant alerted her to the approach of a familiar beverage and she realized a confusingly magnetic presence was leaning in over her right shoulder.

"It sounds like you three are having quite the philosophical discussion! I'm glad to see two of my senior officers getting along with my favourite ex-drone," said a smokey voice above Seven.

Sporting a grin, the Captain casually laid a hand on said shoulder as she reached to place her coffee cup on the table across from Seven.

Seven had been waiting for the opportunity to diversify her data sample, however, she was unprepared for the variety of sensory information. Time, again, seemed to slow, as space contracted to where the Captain's elegant fingers lay against her right shoulder, or to her ear where she heard the rustle of her Commanding Officer's sleeve, and felt a stray lock of hair so briefly whistle by. The environmental controls seemed to be malfunctioning as the room seemingly grew hotter, while her Borg sensors detected no change and nanoprobes furiously worked to remove what in a non-enhanced human individual would have manifested as a monstrous blush. Then the Captain removed her hand, taking the seat across from Seven, and the universe sprung back into motion from it's temporary suspension.

B'Elanna had been speaking - what had she been saying? Oh, yes -

"- and so I really need to get down to Engineering to fix this console that Chapman broke. I mean, I was going to get Harry to take a look at it. You and Seven should really finish chatting without us." Harry nodded furiously as the two began to stand and grab their trays.

The Captain turned to Seven and raised her mug conspiratorially, "it would be my pleasure. What were you discussing - the complexities of emotion? Did you know the Algornos of Zeta Prime experience a different set of emotions in each of the six lobes of their brain? It's fascinating; I think their case makes a good metaphor -"  
Janeway's combadge chirped, interrupting her. "Tuvok to Captain Janeway, your presence is required on the bridge."

Seven was filled with a sudden illogical rage at Tuvok for removing the Captain from her.

"Janeway here, I'll be right there!" The Captain looked apologetically at Seven, "I'm sorry, Seven, but we'll have to finish this another time."

Seven's inconsistent emotions suddenly flopped back towards hope. She had a new appreciation for the level of logic individuals actually managed to achieve, given the unpredictable emotional ground they were constantly navigating. "Would tonight be acceptable?"

"It's a date."


End file.
